Red Deer broke only one temperature record during chilly January

Despite what it felt like, Red Deer only broke one record during the extreme cold in January.

Red Deerians suffered through their coldest day of the month on Jan. 15, when the temperature dropped to a overnight low of -43.2 C, which broke the 1950 record of -40.6 C.

Last month, Environment Canada issued a string of extreme cold warnings for the city. Arctic temperatures arrived on Jan. 9, when it dipped to -29.5 C.

The low briefly climbed to about -22 C, before hitting -38 C on Jan. 13, and hovering in the -40s or -30s until Jan. 18.

“As a whole, the month was the 41st coldest out of 102 years of data. It was on the colder side of average, but nowhere near being the coldest month,” said meteorologist Dan Kulak, with Environment and Climate Change Canada.

He said the coldest January in Red Deer during the past 102 years was in 1950, when the average temperature was -28.5 C, calculated by averaging the daytime high and overnight lows for the month.